


Hold my hand (it’s a long way down)

by VesperNexus



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Ben Solo comes home, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family, Friendship, Hurt Kylo Ren, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Star Wars: The Force Awakens Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2016-01-12
Packaged: 2018-05-10 03:00:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5568235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VesperNexus/pseuds/VesperNexus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Ben leans in, and red bounces of those dark eyes, Han almost expects to feel the sting of a saber piercing where his heart should have been. But he doesn’t move, the love he feels for his sons glues his feet to the bridge, toes sinking into the sands of too much time past.</p><p>And then he feels something cool wrapped in his fingers, watches scarlet light dance like flames across Ben’s skin as his son hands him his hilted lightsaber.</p><p>His eyes widen, and he feels confusion cloud his mind, his thoughts, blur his vision, and then his son’s breath is warm in his ear as he whispers-</p><p>“Run.”</p><p>What if the bridge scene happened a little differently?<br/>What if Ben Solo came home?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A long way down

**Author's Note:**

> After watching The Force Awakens, I had to get something out.  
> Also, I love Kylo Ren.
> 
> Lyrics are from "Bottom of the River" by Delta Rae.
> 
> Enjoy.
> 
> P.S. Apologies for any inaccuracies, I've only seen the movie once so far.
> 
> -VN

**Hold my hand (it’s a long way down)**

It’s a long way down,

A long way down,

And if you fall,

If you fall…

*

Han didn’t think about the spider cracks he stepped on, the cracks which grew beneath his feet as he ran after the infinite tide of black swaying around his son.

He doesn’t think about the tremble of his heart, the shaking of the ground beneath him when Ben turns, eyes wide in the darkness, parted lips imprisoning a thousand words which leave a bitterness in his throat and a sourness on his tongue.

He doesn’t see _Kylo Ren,_ the _lord_. He doesn’t see The First Order reflected in the same eyes he’d wake beside a long time ago, doesn’t see the fury reflected in the flowing saber in Ben’s hands.

He sees his son.

Han wants to beg, plead, _please._ He would get on his knees if it made a difference, fall on any saber if it meant Ben came home. But his voice is lost somewhere in his throat, his thoughts and plans drown in the orbs of a boy that isn’t a man yet. A boy who needs his father.

“Come _home_ ” he says, with a crack that burns his skin and breaks the air like a whip. His arms itch to be wrapped around those slender shoulders, to feel that sharp chin fitted against his shoulder, to have his hands in those long unruly curls. He’s never missed the weight of his son against him more than he does in these moments, when they’re so close, so close yet divided by a river of something born from ideals and misunderstandings and longing.

Ben just looks at him for a moment, and it is truly when Han knows he is looking into the eyes of his son, not Kylo Ren, not this poison that built up The First Order and crippled the Resistance.

“I…” Ben lets out a crumbling breath, the most immeasurable quiver on his lips. He’s facing Han completely now, Han who has the most illogical urge to rip that horrid black cloak from those thin shoulders and drape a warm blanket in its place. To hide those scarred hands from the war, to send his boy back to his mother.

Instead, his hand moves of its own will and mind, and cradles the side of Ben’s face. He feels the too-cold skin, the blemishes of old scars. Runs a rough thumb over a too-prominent cheek bone and remembers a boy who could fit in his arms, who used to sit on his shoulders and point at the stars with chubby fingers. A boy who laughed the rays of the sun day and night, whose eyes held the brightest and most beautiful galaxies Han had ever seen.

Eyes now bathed in pain and sorrow and sadness, to match a quiet voice which shreds the loudest silence.

“I’m being torn apart…”

Han knew when his son was born, that his heart would now forever walk outside his chest. It clenches painfully, twists in the cruel hands of those who broke Ben, who seduced him with false ideals and painted him in fury the same colour as the saber which glows in his hands.

So when Ben leans in, and red bounces of those dark eyes, Han almost expects to feel the sting of a saber piercing where his heart should have been. But he doesn’t move, the love he feels for his sons glues his feet to the bridge, toes sinking into the sands of too much time past.

And then he feels something cool wrapped in his fingers, watches scarlet light dance like flames across Ben’s skin as his son hands him his hilted lightsaber.

His eyes widen, and he feels confusion cloud his mind, his thoughts, blur his vision, and then his son’s breath is warm in his ear as he whispers-

“ _Run._ ”

*

Han’s head snaps up, and Ben looks back at him, hands now devoid of anything.

“Not without you.”

Ben blinks in surprise when his father’s hand closes around his own in an iron grip and pulls him back almost painfully, urgently. Han won’t lose his son again, won’t give him up for anything in this world or the next.

And so they run.

Han leads the way and their footfalls are the loudest in the base. He barely feels the scorch of heat graze past his shoulder, looks up at the forgotten Stormtroopers which had rolled in like a thousand dice, gleaming white like forgotten bones against the walls.

He hears Ben’s quickened breath as they run, hand in hand, Rey and Finn and Chewie covering them with their own fire best they could. No path had never felt so long, the end only leading to an infinite number of corridors, separate streams of a murky river that never meet.

He stutters when they reach a closed door, and feels something in him shatter when his son’s hand slips from his own. His whips around, the artificial gravity never heavier, words ready on his tongue to beg Ben not to leave when they almost made it.

He’s breathless when his son says,

“I know the way.”

They keep running.

*

Their footsteps echo forever until they reach the end, but the Stormtroopers are ever present only ever moments away. With every slide of each door, every ricochet of every plasma beam, the taste of freedom becomes sweeter on Han’s tongue, a lightness spreading like a plague on his chest. It makes him feel weightless, like his bones are made of fine china and his eyes made of glass that will shatter should he blink too hard. His knees twinge and the saber feels awkward in his long fingers, feels dark and heavier than it should be, but he runs like a leaf in the wind behind Ben and recognises the burning feeling.

Hope.

Carved into his ribs with a serrated knife, deep into the whites of his bones and the inside of his eyelids. In the midst of the danger and terror, and running close yet far enough not to tread on the edges of Ben’s black robes, he wants to scream,

_Leia, I’m bringing our son home._

Until they reach the end, through the labyrinth to the Millennium Falcon where Rey and Finn and Chewie await, and a herd of Stormtroopers flood through the gates like mosquitos drawn to a fire.

He hears Chewie’s deep roar, but it’s drowned by a ringing in his ears when Ben waves his arm and dozens white suits are flung back with the Force, pinned against the walls of Starkiller, what will not _remain_ of Starkiller. Like butterflies on display. Plasma rays are still in the air, vibrating angrily, as if strung up for this moment. Han takes a moment to marvel at the power of his son, the gift that _is_ his son. He has seen little that is so incredible.

“ _Come on!_ ” Finn yells, the boy radiating with urgency which flows in electrical currents through his veins.

The ground begins to shake desperately, and Ben’s eyes widen for a moment, surprise gleaming through them like thunder. A split second where the universe freezes and a stray plasma ray evades his hold, evades the Force, and Han has never screamed louder in his life.

“ _BEN!”_

The beam, surging with life, slams through his son’s chest. The sound of skin tearing echoes, sickening, grotesque, plasma fingers shredding the bone underneath to ribbons. Crumbling something so precious as gem.

The lightsaber slips through Han’s grip as the world slips beneath his feet.

Everything quiets for a moment as Ben stutters, losing his footing with a spray of blood through his pale lips. It dyes his chin, his cheek, a sharp blackened red on a blank canvas. Han sees his son fall back in slow motion, and his feet are moving beneath him before Ben’s back cracks against the cold floor, a puppet with strings severed and joints broken.

His son will never be too old for him to carry. Ben is a weight Han will always bear around his shoulders, on his hands, in the space between his ribs, whether made of china or glass or stone.

He doesn’t think about liquid which paints his skin as he fits an arm behind Ben’s shoulders and one beneath his legs, the warmth leaving through the tear between his black robes, the coldness which spreads to Ben’s cheeks and makes Han shiver when his son stifles his scream against the arm of his jacket.

The silver Stormtrooper stands there, commanding, unmoving, blaster trained on them without worry or fear. Dread courses through his veins, a heaviness settling into the china that was his bones. He can almost hear the cracking, too much pressure, too little strength. He’s going to die. He’s going to die with his son in his arms.

They were so close.

_I’m sorry, Leia._

The trooper’s finger tightens and Han watches the trigger twitch-

_BANG_

The side of the silver arms gleams in the light as it shatters into a thousand pieces, torn and broken and scorched. The pieces bounce helplessly off the ground as the Stormtrooper is thrown back violently, weapon sliding across the floor with a screech.

Behind the crumbled form is a man, hair a red ruffled mess in the sharp light, features almost as pale as his son’s, uniform adorned with marks of high command in The First Order. Han can already see the red dripping from his ledger, soaking through his pocket and dripping onto his pristine shoes.

General Hux.

“Move!” The man yells, slicing through the ringing in his ears, and Han doesn’t need telling twice.

He’s aboard the Falcon and the door creaks in protest when Chewie closes it behind the three of them, the moments seeping through their grasp like Ben’s blood through his fingers.

He barely notices Chewie disappearing, the Falcon as she glides upward, away from the broken silver Stormtrooper, the remnants of a base.

All that remains is the unmoving weight in his arms. 

 


	2. By the pale moonlight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A rusted smuggler, a defect, a monster and visages of Kylo Ren on an ages old boat. Han remembers Leia once saying to him something about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. But this isn’t a road, and intentions have always been subjective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the overwhelming response!

He’s plunged under water, everything is blurred. His eyes move quickly, he sees everything and nothing at all.

Han’s skin burns, itches from the flames simmering deep inside his veins, boiling his blood. His arms are numb, the sharp edges of needles fitted neatly into his red palms, unfeeling fingers pressing down the rubies flowing from Ben’s cloak. They shine in the light, bright like gold, too hot not to make Han shiver. His back creaks, audible, severe, loud over the ringing in his ears and the gasps streaming from his son’s too-red lips like fresh tide.

He wants to yell, scream, beg, but he’s drowning alive. He wants to lift Ben’s back of the Falcon, tuck all the red back inside. Sweep it from where it’s drying on the metal, scrape it off with his nails from every corner. He wants to cradle Ben, cover eyes which burn like the base far beneath them.

“- _SOLO!_ ”

Something falls through the water, the cry dragging him with filthy claws from the abyss. Han’s chin snaps up painfully, a wave of vertigo threatening to push him askew.

He sees.

General Hux is kneeling before him, translucent features bent wildly- eyes little but whites, mouth curved towards his chin, teeth bared and blurred by the words ripped from his lips.

“SOLO!”

And Ben lies between them, the black of his robes tinted too much, dripping the wrong colour. What skin left on his abdomen burns like dry ice, soothed by the warm flow of life that seeps between Han’s rigid fingers like water through a dam. His son’s head is tilted back, unruly locks strewn about in a makeshift halo, an echo of the light which crawls from his eyes and bleeds through his lips. Han watches it flicker, a candle in the wind. He breathes in, the dirt, the blood. Swallows the hope and bends his ceramic bones, blinks the glass from his eyes. He breathes out his voice, brittle as the hands he wants to hold.

“Get me my medkit!” It’s a roar, a growl, a cry. “Bandages! Chewie, _help me damn it_!” It’s the monster Ben knew hid under his bed, the monster that drove him into Leia’s arms a lifetime ago. It bares crude fangs and wields rusted nails, makes the space between Han’s ribs a little bigger every second.

His son hears him through the blur, and Ben tilts his head to the side. A trickle of red slides through his teeth, crawling down pale flesh. There are no galaxies in the eyes that flutter.

_No._

Bandages are thrust in front of him, by different hands, unfamiliar hands. _Finn._

Han glances up too quickly, but his fingers are glued to the hole in his son’s chest, the gap which tears something much bigger in the father than the son.

It happens in a blink or two, hands the same colour as the bandages snatch them freely, and they are ripped apart with vigour. Hux kneels closer, blood seeping into the knees of his uniform, spreading to the shins. His hair trembles above his eyes, blue as ice, eyes of a man Han would have shot otherwise.

“Move,” he says, and Han does not mistake it for a request. If not for the bare glimmer in his stare, and when he glances, Han looks into his reflection. The fear which thunders, unrelenting, vicious.

As soon as Han forces his hands from the wound, the dam reopens and spills too much red. Ben gasps, loud, a renegade of his own body. His breaths are shallow, barely breaking through the surface, fingers clenching and unclenching periodically by his sides.

He barely sees the flesh charred to black before his fingers are replaced by the rough bandages which bite into the skin, skin without stars.

There’s a sudden arch to Ben’s back, a bend which threatens to break him. Han doesn’t think twice.

He slides behind his son, levers his scarred hands beneath the familiar set of those shoulders, tense as a bowstring. Gently, he pulls Ben’s head into his lap, all pale features curdled with barely suppressed pain. It takes a moment, maybe two, and his heart beats in visages of red- fuelled by the fear his son may crumble away in his arms. Grey shards sinking into the Falcon, seeping with the blood into her floor, lost forever. A memory.

Ben manages to take a deep breath as Hux readjusts the bandages, face shadowed by the light.

“Get me bacta patches,” he orders, quieter this time. Han had forgotten about Finn, the boy scrambling to the medkit with urgency instilled in shaky hands and goose bumps which hide beneath his sleeves.

The General is careful, near as gentle as Han had been. It surprises him, shakes him to the core how the cold eyes of a man responsible for the deaths of millions could harbour so much care for another. For _Ben._

Han catches the quick glances, the bit lip. The quiver.

Finn kneels where Han had been and hands over a patch, sterile, white, small. Too small, insufficient. Like two large hands held up against a wave. All they have.

“Ben,” he whispers, when his son is too still. The boy’s eyes flutter like caged butterflies. His eyelashes are too dark against skin which drips colour with as much ease breathing. “Ben?” He says, louder, a cry when there is no reply.

His fingers scramble to his son’s chest, one palm flat sneaking through the torn cloak, pressing hard against the flesh. He holds his breath, and feels himself flayed when a quiet beat speaks back to him.

“Ren,” Hux’s voice echoes, and Ben’s eyes remain open.

The bandages are more difficult to remove now, soaked through and plastered against the skin. But Hux handles his son with a care Han didn’t believe him capable of, and thinks this is a solar system of questions for another day.

The rubies aren’t spilling so indiscriminately now. Han watches as Finn hands Hux the patches, applying enough pressure to keep Ben awake while the General covers the wound.

His son hisses, a broken melody from a boy who Han wants to hide away forever. They have no anaesthesia to dull the pain, and few resources to maintain Ben’s condition, critical as it is.

Han feels a familiar pressure cracking his ribs, rubbing his glass eyes raw, drying the crevice of his mouth. Ben turns his head slightly in his lap, and his son meets his eyes. Leia’s eyes, Han thinks. The same skin with stars strewn about it, the same curve of the lips.

He looks at the boy in his lap, and remembers the weight of those arms around his neck, how he tiptoed to wrap himself around his father before leaving to live up to their legacy.

“He doesn’t have long.”

Hux’s hands are drying with fresh blood, and Han wants to ask. Wants to know why this monster of a man abandoned the First Order, committed treason, risked execution. He wonders what humanity remains in those shadowed eyes- how any _could_ remain, and feels something in him twist and fray. He doesn’t want to see those hands, drying with more blood he cannot see, at Ben’s wrist. Hands which took innocent lives, which tortured and _broke_ , hands attached to long fingers almost protectively holding on to his son.

“The pain should keep him awake.” Han doesn’t reply.

He thinks about Ben, and remembers Kylo Ren, Lord of the Knights of Ren. He doesn’t think about what _his_ hands have done.

Finn clears his throat, and Han sees a human epitome of the Resistance.

“Rey and Chewie should get us back to base soon.”

“Can you move him?” Han nods, wordless, voice having spilled with the red.

“I…” Glass eyes sharply glance down at Ben, licking the blood from his lips, taking every breath as it comes. “I can walk…” a breath, “on my own.”

Han’s chest constricts, his ribs a prison for something not quite there. He wants to laugh, cry, scream through the water but he hasn’t seen his son in years and he’s still drowning. In these moments, Han looks at Ben Solo and sees remnants of Kylo Ren, who refused weakness, who resented himself for his own vulnerability. Who attempted to crush the light by crushing himself.

Han thinks Hux laughs, but it’s a weak brittle sound, animalistic, insensitive to his ears. It’s sharp and shocks him, it’s anything but humorous. Finn looks ill, like he wants to speak but he chokes on disbelief. A rusted smuggler, a defect, a monster and visages of Kylo Ren on an ages old boat. Han remembers Leia once saying to him something about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. But this isn’t a road, and intentions have always been subjective.

Ben doesn’t look away from his father, doesn’t seem to notice Hux or Finn or anyone else on the Falcon. He looks at his father and for the first time, when Han looks back, he isn’t quite sure who he’s looking back at.

He pushes the thought away. He replaces it with the weight in his lap, those familiar eyes. He can almost see the lines of laughter ages old. He doesn’t think Ben has smiled in a long time, let alone laughed the sun.

“Han-”

He doesn’t listen. Fits one arm behind his son’s knee and the other his shoulders, and he’s as heavy and as light as Han remembers him. Han won’t listen because he loves his son more than anyone and anything in any galaxy and any system.

Han will tear down planets, raze them to the ground and build them up if he will hear Ben call him _father_ again.

Something has given his son back to him, and no force in the universe will stop him.

So he ignores the hitched breath and the tension in those shoulders, and lifts his son as if it were two decades ago. He leaves the General and Finn and feels emotion bleed from the boy in his arms in warm breaths echoed on his collar and gloved hands that weakly grasp at his jacket. Like when Ben was a child, begging to be let down because he was too old.

Now, Ben was only asking to be held up.

*

Hux doesn’t understand why he’s here.

Here, kneeling in a river of Kylo Ren’s blood. Here, with his hands aching from blaster recoil after he shot Phasma. He doesn’t quite understand what possessed him.

What possessed him to commit treason, to sign his execution with hands coated in red. To aid the _Resistance_.

He glances up at FN-2187. Eyes wide, resolve certain. The boy was programmed from birth to obey the First Order, to remain loyal to his cause, and he failed too.

Somehow, that was little consolation.

*

His son’s back is still taut against the soft fabric of the bed, but something tells Han it has little to do with the pain.

Ben looks too young, hidden away between the dark sheets. Messy locks hide his eyes, Leia’s eyes, shadow the curve of his lips and darken the snow of his skin. One arm is pulled across his side, naked fingers splayed against the wound beneath the covers.

Han sits on a chair by the bed, fingers digging into his knees, shoulders heavy with exhaustion. There’s an ache deep in his chest, his arms, where emerald veins protrude beneath the skin of his hands. Han has never felt more uncomfortable in his life. It has been such a long time since he has been a father.

He wants to clear his throat, but he has so little voice he fears it may cause him to lose it all together. “We’ll be home soon.”

For a long moment, there is no reply from the boy in the bed. The boy that wears darkness like a cloak, allowing it to fester in his soul and coil in the rims of his eyes. He reminds himself this is the same boy from the bridge. Han is trying.

“Home…” Han sees the word filter between them, heavy, untouched. Ben looks pained to have said it, like a word too foreign to be familiar. A taboo. Han doesn’t think his son remembers the last time it left his lips.

He can see the gears turning in Ben’s head, the wires glowing with heat in attempt to bury the emotion, the thoughtlessness. It reflects in those knowledgeable eyes, and for once Han wants his son to think with his heart. Something in his own chest beats violently and his mouth feels like Jakku.

“The Resistance-”

“The _Resistance_ ” It is sudden, and comes scolding, breathed in between a mirthless laugh. One that Han has heard too often. Ben turns his head, and the blood has been cleaned from his lips, but Han still sees it, red burning like static in suddenly colourless eyes. “I will not _fight_ for the Resistance!”

Ben spits the word, like it tastes something vile. Beneath him.

Something else simmers within his veins, beneath the sorrow and fear. Anger. The anger that burned in his chest decades ago after Ben left for the temple. His breath hitches, and he tries not to raise his voice.

“The Resistance is your _home_!” He fails, fuelled by desperation. He won’t let Ben leave not again, not after he lost him. After the walked away, after Han carried him.

“They are _weak._ ” It is quiet, scathing, and suddenly Ben is seventeen again and all the years as a parent have not prepared Han for this moment. He bites his tongue, but the physical pain only fuels him- “What do you expect of them? A trial before my execution?”

Ben lifts himself on an unsteady arm, the other still on his side. The breath is knocked from Han. “Execution? You are _my son-_ ”

“I am _Kylo Ren_!”

Han stands so quickly the chair behind him topples with a crash.

There is a moment where time is frozen in its place. Where the hands of ever clock are frozen, and the only that moves is the emotion echoed in Ben’s voice. The shadows beneath his eyes are the shadows within his soul, tainting, infecting. A tendril of fear coils around Han’s ankles, his wrists, chains him in place with the heavy shackles of a fight he has had more than once before. A fight he has never won. He wonders if this has changed anything.

His palms are flat and his fingers splayed when he pushed back the wave looming above them. The anger is not gone, buried deep in a place he will find and tear apart later. There is control in his voice when he speaks, hard and taut and relentless.

“You are _my son_.”

Ben parts his lips, and there is red on his teeth. Han feels unbalanced when the Falcon trembles beneath him. Something shatters on the other side of the room, shards littering the floor. The bed creaks. The wood of the chair splinters behind him. He tries to imagine the boy who handed him his saber and told him to _run._

“You are _Ben Solo_ now as you were on that bridge. Kylo Ren?” The name drowns on his tongue. “Kylo Ren would have stabbed his lightsaber through my heart on that bridge.”

For once, Ben says nothing. Han has the world to say, but his words flee when he notices the lines of pain at the corners of his son’s eyes. The twist of his mouth not present only moments ago.

When his own blood stops simmering, he breathes in the scent of copper.

Han moves forwards before his son can hide beneath a mask of exhaustion. He rips the covers down from Ben’s chest and feels the universe skewing on its side.

His son’s hand is painted in red, fingers digging into the burn, patch askew. Torn skin curdles underneath his fingernails and blood dries on his knuckles. Ripping the wound apart to fuel the pain, to keep the fury cycling through his veins. To maintain the anger of the dark, using the hurt and fury to quell the light on the edges of his heart.

Han glances at his son, the hard press of his lips, the grit of his teeth. He wanders where it all went so wrong.

His knees protest when they brush against the hard floor, cracked and fragmented. He places one palm flat against his son’s hand and with a gentleness he had always left to Leia, manoeuvres it from the blood and charred skin. Ben lets him reattach the edges of the patch, the last visages of red- of fury- he tried to desperately to maintain seeping from his eyes. Han looks into their depths and tries to recognise the fractured boy staring back.

A knock breaks the silence, splinters it apart like glass. A bodiless voice echoes from the other side.

“We’re about to land.” _Finn_.

Han has so much to say but everything seems so beyond him. The weight on his chest grows heavier still.

When he leaves the room, he wonders who he’s left on the other side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for any inaccuracies! Please tell me about anything you guys notice.
> 
> I wanted more to happen in this chapter, but I sort of got away from me. I promise there will be a lot more development in the next one.


	3. First born son

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ground burns beneath his shins, and Hux wants to kick the red sand into the eyes of the rebels. He has the urge to blind them, disorient them, kick their feet from beneath them and watch them topple. Burn them out like broken matchsticks. He wants to hear the thud of flesh against flesh, feel the crack of fragile bone beneath his knuckles. His hand itches, his fingers tingle and he wants to slide them across Ren’s palms, lift the fool from Organa’s presence and run to the rhythm of broken screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for this incredible response. I'm so pleased so many of you seem to be enjoying this :)

There’s something pulling on Han’s neck, digging its sharpened claws into his shoulder blades, breaking apart paper flesh and cracking ceramic bones. He feels the blood dribble across his skin, cascading past his eyelids, seeping from his fingernails. It pounds at his temples, a beat without rhythm, murmurs words he can’t make out.

There are too many colours on his hands. Colours he can’t wash out.

His footsteps are faded, subservient, voiceless. There is no echo against the metal, his heels sinking into sand. Temporary.

“We almost there?”

Rey flinches, a twitch racing from the crinkled edges of her eyes to the bend of her knees. She breathes in, and Han knows she’s inhaling the copper, the uncertainty, exhaling a false confidence unbeknownst to the pulsing vein in her neck too quickly pumping blood from a too quickly beating heart.

Even when Chewie replies, it’s subdued, quiet. Light words with a heavy meaning he grips to maintain his balance, so fiercely his knuckles whiten and his throat narrows. Han teeters, dances on the edge of a raging abyss without sound. A raging abyss with moonlit skin and messy locks and his father’s smile. It has been so long since Han has seen it. He thinks about the other side of the door and fears he never will.

Han thinks he nods, but the water still reaches his neck and he’s forced to stand on his toes. The base is in sight now, a glowing beam pulsing amidst nothing. He feels the Falcon tilt, swoop with none of her prowess. He listens to her for a moment, strains his ears and flattens one hand against her hull. She buzzes with life beneath his fingertips, flowing with a spark that could once resuscitate his still heart. It should be a comfort, but nothing feels familiar anymore. He is too translucent.

There’s a landing party beyond these gates and Han knows his eyes should be brimming with colour, shining with a success he has not claimed for decades. His breaths should be warm with apprehension, his fingers drumming against the filthy fabric of his knee anxiously. Leia waits beyond these gates, the Resistance, the battle they should be winning.

They are home.

For some reason, Han is only submerged further.

“What should we do with the General?” Rey’s voice is young, innocent. Han can feel regret coiling within the marrow of his bones when he looks at her, a child, a soldier. She’s pursing her lips and lifting her chin, attempting to lead his eyes from the quiver on her skin, the pressed lines between her eyebrows.

He sees movement beneath them, two-foot tall figures milling about, ants on a hill. _Leia._

The silence is a heavy cloak wrapped around their soldiers, bred from a question Han doesn’t quite know how to answer.

He remembers how the pale fingers scrapped against Ben’s gloved hands, curled around a thin wrist. How his son’s blood had dried beneath those pristine fingernails, how the red had seeped into the cuffs of his trousers and clawed its wait up to his shins. How looking into Hux’s eyes was like looking into a mirror splintered with a thousand spider cracks bursting with a vicious fear.

Han saw the rare visages of humanity within him, the beaten black pieces alit with fire and something so agonisingly raw when Hux looked at his son. It disturbed his bones, itched the curve of his collarbones and pinched at the fragile flesh beneath the hollows of his eyes. Han only hoped there was a light in Hux he hadn’t seen.

“I don’t think he’s going to run.” Rey tilts her chin, glances with eyes brimming a familiar wisdom. She’s asking a question she can’t find the voice to say. He clears his throat, feels the pressure sneak from his tongue down the tightness of his throat. “He attacked a high commanding officer of the Order without an acceptable reason.” Only Rey knows that isn’t it, but her teeth grit together and Han feels thankful.

The Millennium Falcon trembles beneath the soles of his boots as she comes to a halt, quivering with the aftershocks of the tremulous journey. Members of the Resistance spill with hurry like Tatooine wine across a filthy bar top.

On the edge, with lines around the corners of glassy eyes and fingers pressed hard against her trousers, Leia stands, and Han wants nothing more than to shatter in her arms, cut her palms as she picks up the pieces and glues him back together.

“Open the-”

But the gate on the Falcon is already rising, Han can feel it in the vibrations reverberating against her metal, the _creaks_ of her old bones as she protests.

His breath is squeezed from his ribs with impatient hands. His feet are loud now as he runs, the corridors singing a familiar melody around him. He runs and doesn’t look where he’s going, follows the Falcon’s calls until he reaches the door.

Hux is there, hair dark in the light, features moulded with no traces of emotion. His shoulders are rigged, a straight line, fingers curled into fists beneath his hips. Motionless, waiting, _watching._

Han doesn’t feel their shoulders brush, his torn jacket mangled at the sleeves, the leather smearing blood on the General’s once pristine uniform. He stands as still as the man, the man he fears is without humanity, and stares at the scene before him.

The doors.

Forced open, the latches are bent and the metal distorted. Days ago, sourness would have filled his tongue and transcended his voice. Days ago, he would not have seen his son, one arm coiled around his torso, fingers bloodied, a tremble echoed in his figure as he limps from the Falcon. Light bounces of the gleaming silver of his ship and leaves Ben a fading silhouette.

“Ben-”

Hux tenses beside him, stops Han from running to his son, his son who should be delirious from the pain, who should have crumpled to ashes long before now. The veins on the other man’s hand threaten to burst through the thin of his skin when they see a figure slipping from the crowd towards Ben.

His mother.

*

Leia’s toes are curled tightly in her boots, the soles of her feet pressed into every grain of sand, her heels dug in and ankles shackled by a memory.

Goosebumps crawl up her arms, toil under her jacket to the back of her neck. A tide of dizziness submerges her mind, and the water blurs her eyes, takes the breath from her lips as the waves recede and leave her gasping.

He’s taller, the boy that stands before her. His skin is the colour of ash and she can see constellations carved beneath his cheekbones. The hollows of his eyes are too prominent, with more shadows than she remembers. They gleam, the jaded orbs which she has seen too often in the looking glass. Colour has seeped from them, galaxies melted from their irises.

The line of Ben’s shoulders is straight, yet his bones curve into themselves. There’s a hunch to his stance where there used to be strings, threads tied around his elbows and his wrists, torn loose leaving weights in his palms. She looks at the horrid black of his robes, the cloak which is still strung heavily around too-narrow shoulders. She can almost feel the brush of soft lips against her cheek, a smile so bright it burnt out the sun when it curved into her skin.

She thinks his breath would be cold now, the warmth sucked by the years past. She thinks if her boy kissed his mother, jagged pieces of ice would splinter on her cheek.

It doesn’t stop her.

She looks at her boy, and thinks,

_He’s home._

When she leaps, legs moving faster than they ever had, her heels crack painfully against the dry sand. Her arms are arcs around those shoulders, the tips of her toes digging into the ground as she reaches as high as she can possibly muster.

Ben feels rigid in her arms. Her fingers clutch at the fabric of his cloak, the blunts of her fingernails digging into his back, pressing down against the sharp ridges of his spine. Her knees protest, yell and scream when she flattens herself against her son. She breathes in the twitching muscles running down his shoulders and feels the edges of his ribs like sharpened knives through the fabric.

The tip of his chin nudges against the top of her head, messes her windswept hair. His robes burn against her cheek, light a fire at the corners of her soul when she parts her eyelids and sees the same black she had years ago. The darkest shade she’d ever seen.

He’s colder than she’d ever seen him but he’s warmer than he’s ever felt. And when her son moves his own arms to coil around her like a storm, uncertainly, barely felt through her jacket, a hand clenches a fist between her ribs.

She doesn’t remember the last time Ben hugged her, hugged her back. The feeling of his warm breath atop her head is too foreign, too unreal. Something wet cascades a slow arc through her hair to leave an imperceptible print on her shoulder. She can smell the salt, taste the bitterness of her son’s first tear since a time too long passed.

“Mother…” Leia thinks he whispers it, but it could be the wind, a lost echo from the silence around them. It’s too hopeful, sears a hole in her heart. The black blurs, and it might be her eyes.

“Your _home_.”

Leia can’t physically pull away. She is a prison around her son, a weight which she feared she would never feel in her arms again. She has lost count of the nights without sleep, when she wept and wept with Han curled around her, eyelids stapled open in fear she would forget the crinkles around Ben’s mouth when he smiled the sun. The quizzical lines between on his brow when he was puzzled. The stars reflected against his eyes at night.

“ _General_ , step away from Kylo Ren.”

The words fizz beneath her skin, and fear spikes at the roof of her mouth. There’s something irrational about the crippling possessiveness stalking through the roots of her soul.

“General. _Leia._ ” Caluan. Lifting her head from her son’s chest is the most difficult thing she has ever done.

The Major’s hair is white wisps in the sandy storm, his eyes hard and elbows bent, blaster rifle trained at her son’s back. Behind him stands a pyramid rebels, young and old, weapons held up with scopes tucked into the hollows of their eyes.

Her hands are still on Ben’s forearms. “Major put that _down_.”

“I’m sorry General but you need to step away from Ren right now.”

An anger swirls inside her, a hurricane brewing in the desert. Ben is in her arms and they _can’t take him away again._ Not _again._

She glances up at her boy, and he’s peering straight through her. It dances in his vision, vibrant ribbons of gold and silver. He just looks at her and doesn’t speak a single word, doesn’t utter anything in his deep baron voice. He tells her with his fingers gently cradling her elbows what his voice cannot say. It’s okay.

Leia shakes her head, unglues her eyes from her son but fears he will disappear. “You’re not taking Ben away from me.” Her tone is hard, solid, as low and paralysing as a plasma beam.

The General opens his mouth, to argue, to fuel the storm which has her fraying at the seams, “Ben’s dead, Leia.”

She shakes her head again. Her lips are steel and the breath in her lungs is fire. The major is her friend, her advisor, but she is _burning._ There’s a prick under every pore of her skin, a tremble which rides her spine in waves and invisible claws which draw blood pulling her chin up high. She is burning and she will _burn_ anyone in her way.

“Don’t you remember what he _did_?” It’s quiet, a plea. It’s wooden and splinters and she devours it.

“He’s my _son._ ”

The soldiers are not standing statues anymore. Rifles are held too low, too high, too uncertainly. Had this been a war there would have been nothing left but flares and embers.

But the Major only inches closer. Ben still hadn’t turned to face him, his gaze too far away and colourless. Slipping.

“There’s no need for this, he isn’t _dangerous-_ ”

The man huffs a humourless laugh, torn forcefully from curled lips. He looks at her like she’s a wild animal to be tamed, handled and removed.

“ _Kylo Ren_ is _not_ dangerous? Leia you are _blinded_ by-”

There’s a yell from behind him, and the scrape of sharp heels against metal. Leia inches from behind her son and peers above shoulders.

Red hair flaming as the sun, eyes cold and familiar, skin like snow. Two of her rebels have grasped General Hux by the forearms and twist their long fingers viciously in his bloodied jacket.

The leader of the _Finalizer_ , _Star Killer Base_ , growls- animalistic, fierce, when he’s pushed to his knees. He breathes out and glares at her, eyes impenetrable walls to a fortress adorned with spikes, barbed with bloodied limbs. He glares with a sneer, a scowl, as if the red dust marring the knees of his uniform has annoyed him, as if the touch of the rebels revolted him.

Ben turns so quickly in her arms she feels shaken.

*

The ground burns beneath his shins, and Hux wants to kick the red sand into the eyes of the rebels. He has the urge to blind them, disorient them, kick their feet from beneath them and watch them topple. Burn them out like broken matchsticks. He wants to hear the thud of flesh against flesh, feel the _crack_ of fragile bone beneath his knuckles. His hand itches, his fingers tingle and he wants to slide them across Ren’s palms, lift the fool from Organa’s presence and run to the rhythm of broken screams.

Instead, he’s on his knees with a rifle hard against his pounding temple. He refuses to look at torn shoes, keep his head down like some peasant, like someone _guilty_. His eyes scorch holes into man standing above him, and the resentment bubbles like a fountain in his sternum. It fuels him, the hate, stabs jagged glass into the base of his skull and slits the skin of his palms with a serrated knife.

He looks at the nameless man’s stance, the hard slouch of his shoulders, the imbalance of the weapon in his hands, like he’s never held a rifle in his life. Hux furrows his brow, feels the skin twist across his forehead. He would not die so undignified. “ _Pathetic._ ”

The rebel growls back, and there’s an ugly scrunch to his chin, like used paper before it is incinerated. Hux purses his lips at the aimless man and _spits._

The man swings the butt of the rifle in a brutal arc. The hard metal leaves galaxies dancing behind his eyes, blood running warm down his temple. The bone doesn’t give in beneath the hit, and Hux breathes in the red like sweet nectar, raising the pyre of destruction once buried deep.

When he looks back up, a mock etched into his irises, he does not expect to see the rebel cut through the wind, fly through the red. He does not expect to hear the crumbling of a body as it dents the metal of Solo’s ship metres and metres away, does not expect to feel a powerful push surge through the air from Kylo Ren’s open palm.

_Fool._

“Ben!” General Organa yells, something so fractured in her voice Hux almost believes she cares.

There are a dozen blasters pointed at Ren’s skull, whose arm is still outstretched, fingers curled inwards as they hold the rebel in place a dozen metres away, choking, eyes as wide as moons, desperate for breath. Hux knows they won’t miss.

“Don’t touch him.” It quiet, low, barren, open. Not laced with the same fury that burns consoles and annihilates rooms. It is cold. It burns the space between them, lights it with their broken matchsticks and freezes Hux’s mouth dry. His throat tightens, and every pulse of his heart is a splintered bone pushed deeper between the layers of his skin.

“ _Ben_ ” Organa _pleads_ , and if Hux were capable of organising the earthquake of thoughts shaking his mind and knocking over his rationality, he would have admired Ren’s ability to reduce anyone to a trembling, begging mess.

When Ren’s fingers unclench, a web of cracks shatters the trance. For a moment, Hux fears he has succumbed to the will of his biological mother, but it’s the spike of pain layered across his pale features.

Kylo Ren stumbles across the sand, and it’s too familiar for Hux not to surge off his knees and open his arms.

But he is forced down with more open palms, and in his head are entangled fingers, messing about hair drizzled with blood.

“Ben-” Leia Organa stands in Hux’s place, where he should be. She has one arm wrapped around her son’s waist as he leans on her, figure tremble and gasps leaking through his lips. He’s too pale, his eyes are made of too much glass, his skin is too transparent under the hot sun. “What’s _wrong_ with him?”

“He was shot-” The fingers tighten in Hux’s hair, and he can already feel the coarse rope twisted around the flesh of his neck, “We need to take him to medical _now._ ” There’s a fear Hux is far too well acquainted with in Solo’s voice, bodiless as it is.

He glances from underneath his eyelashes when the smell of copper becomes so strong its putrid, filters through his teeth and claws its way down his chest so far we can taste it in his ribs.

Kylo looks like a splintered terran picture frame knocked on its side, rusted nail bursting too brutally through the flesh of wasted timber. Organa is the only thing keeping him up, says the spikes pulling his knees down to Hux’s sight.

“The hell are you waiting for?” Han Solo’s voice is mangled, like a corpse shocked back to life. A sky without blue, or red, or grey. “ _Help him_.” Hux never did think he would ever agree with the man. Hux never did think he would commit high treason either, but the ache in his hands and the heat on the pad of his right thumb isn’t going away.

The Major doesn’t move. Caluan Ematt. Lieutenant in the Alliance, fought during the Galactic Civil War. The man is still, and Hux knows he’s debating on whether Kylo is worth the pain. Whether anything else would be sweeter.

The rebel troops seem uncertain, ripped apart between obeying their General and their Major, a theme agonisingly common in the base. Hux wonders how they are able to operate with _any_ level efficiency.

Hux has always hated war heroes.

Even Organa’s powerful shoulders seem to tremble beneath the weight of her son, the weight of her world. In a silence to tense Hux will choke on his breath should he take it too deep, Kylo falls to his knees and the splatter of his blood shines like fire against the sand. It seems like there is more of it outside Kylo’s pulsing veins than there is in them.

A beat passes before Han pushes apart the troops, hands parting a raging river, etching writings on broken stone. His fingers find Ematt’s collar and his fingers burst through the fabric, breaking apart the seams.

“Help my _son_.”

The silence is deafening, suffocating. It is bitter, wound tightly as a spring. It cloaks Han Solo and the Major and the General, presses heavily on Kylo as he kneels bleeding in the midst of a storm. He is too quiet, and for once Hux wants to hear the fury braced in his deep voice, feel his ire cut through the rain.

The Major just breathes out, the only one. “Fetch a stretcher. We’ll see if he can be _saved_.”

It’s vile, mocking, sounds like something that would come from Hux’s lips.

He watches as they pull Kylo onto a stretcher, and feels his own wrists chained behind his back.

He wonders if saving Kylo Ren served any purpose but a signing to their execution.

At least he won’t have to worry about the paperwork.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seems like this chapter got away from me again. The only reason I ended it is because I feared it would wind up been too long and laborious. I can see the next chapter play out in my head, and I can honestly say more happens.
> 
> I don't know much about Hux's character, so I hope I didn't overplay him here. Also, at this point since the film is so raw with so many new characters, I didn't feel the need t introduce any OCs for the Rebellion, and figured I would use characters already existing in the Resistance. 
> 
> Thank you for your support and patience. :)


	4. Where the water runs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You may have executed a commander of the First Order, aided a traitor in escaping, and by association aided the Resistance.”
> 
> Organa’s voice rings in his ears with such certainty a laugh bubbles at the base of his throat. He tastes the sourness at the top of his mouth and swallows it back down.
> 
> “Like I said,” it rolls smoothly, “it was the most beneficial course of action.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the long wait! Again, thank you kindly for you fabulous feedback. I hope you guys enjoy reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Blunt edges of a worn ceramic sink threaten to bend beneath Han’s grip. His elbows are drawn in tight, lips pressed together and taped shut. His reflection bounces of off the mirror plane, the sharp tainted glass lighting the twists at the corners of his eyes and dampening the fog in his irises.

Bringing Ben home was never going to be easy. Ben, who hadn’t been Ben in years. Who broke men and burnt cities, who held remnants of a dark soul in the glowing ire of a scarlet saber. Who cut his fingers open collecting the shards of Darth Vader, washed away whatever good had been in Anakin Skywalker.

He hadn’t expected his son to be greeted with ease, acceptance. He’d forgotten, for a moment trapped in the never-ending, what Kylo Ren had done to the Resistance. How the dark had swallowed his humanity and left him to rumble the planes with tones of war, anarchy. Eclipsed at the bottom of the river, Han had been numb to his comrades who had bled out, cried, pleaded at the behest of a man who stood atop the world. The man who wore the mask, silver and black and coiled with anger, whose cloak bellowed behind him to foreshadow the misery he left in his footsteps.

Han forgot that his world couldn’t see Ben Solo through Kylo Ren.

“What are you thinking about?”

Leia’s voice startles him, a shadow over his shoulder. Han berates himself for being so unobservant, careless. A shudder flows up through his spine and leaves a sharp tingling at his temples.

He forces his lips to twist in what he hopes is a smile. He can’t force himself to laugh. “Is there anything else?”

Leia moves closer to him, where he’s leaning, grasping, holding on so tightly to stay afloat. He catches the constellations in her eyes, sees them bathed in a hard determination as she looks at him through the mirror.

“You brought him home.” He wants to shower in her soft voice, tinted with thawing ice at the edges. He feels her warmth at his back, forces his arms to stay still when her lean fingers crawl around his waist.

“Did I?” He asks, and knows. Han knows but he needs to hear it.

She sighs, a languid breath through dry lips. For a moment he fears she won’t say it.

“You brought our son home.”

But there’s a tiredness in her voice, weights shackled to every word breaking the sentence apart and drowning alive the meaning in her tone.

He turns in her arms, no longer seeing her through a fog. She tilts her chin, pressed against him, a comfort which he uses to soar above the skies and remain chained to the ground.

He speaks, and when he does Han says the world. He remembers blood beneath nails, fingers digging into an unhealed wound. Remembers a fury, a coldness that burns and splinters. Remembers a wave of an arm, breathlessness, _begging._ A boy who had once asked about Vader, not Anakin.  

“What if he isn’t just our son anymore?”

When Leia replies, it’s into his chest. She doesn’t meet his eyes, doesn’t give him the closure he so desperately scrapes his palms for. But her arms tighten and she holds him together.

“Ben Solo, or Kylo Ren. Han, he will _always_ be our son.”

He bites his tongue and feels his tunic dampen, hears hitched breaths that say more than words. Han braces his arms around her shoulders and curls his fingers into her hair, every strand biting into his flesh.

Part of him wants to scream, yell, cry. He wants to feel his own tears sliding down his cheeks, burning into Leia’s hair. He wants to hold her at arm’s length and dig his fingers into her arms. He wants to spill the argument at the tip of his tongue, accuse her again, feel something like spite for what she had done to him and their son.

Han wants to resent her for not telling him what Ben was going through. For not relying Luke’s message a lifetime ago. For attempting to crush the darkness reaching out with her own two hands, for burying his head in the sand and leaving him to whither with false beliefs.

He wants to blame her for Snoke, the First Order, the birth of Kylo Ren and the death of Ben Solo. To burn her, see the scrunch of her chin and the red of her skin, feel the burning imprints of her fingers on his cheek.

But Han only feels tired, the hope of _something_ holding him up, tethering him to this place.

He holds her and they burn, but they burn together.

*

“What of General Hux?” Leia stands in this sinking boat and cups the water with her hands.

The Major sits opposite her, the snow of his hair pulled into a bun, layered off his tense shoulders. The purse of his colourless lips tells her enough.

“He is in holding.” Simple. Straightforward. She buries her desire to shift in these uncomfortable chairs, roll away the strains in her neck and stand from all these corners digging into her flesh.

She nods. Does not argue, does not comment. “I will need to see him.”

Ematt lifts one immaculate eyebrow. “He is already being seen to.”

A fever raises the water on her boat, and she peers into the murky waters of her comrade’s eyes. A long way down indeed.

“I will need to see him.” She repeats, circular, cyclical. Unyielding.

Ematt only tilts his head, as if incapable of further expression. She knows he would shackle her wrists and lock her in her room if he could, _for her own good_. She has already heard the rumours, the vicious words.

“As you wish.”

*

His bottom lip burns, torn flesh remnants of an impulsive fist. There’s copper between his teeth, red staining the white, smeared between the crevices of his gums. Besides the molten violet pitched at the corner of his forehead, Hux is relatively untouched.

Curious.

More so is the woman who sits before him, shoulders hard and muscles tense beneath her issued jacket.

Leia Organa’s fingers are entwined, clasped in front of her, the bones by her wrists resting on the hard metal of the table. Veins threaten to burst through her skin, a jagged emerald in the harsh light. He catches her reflection on the angry gleam of silver, the rust of the door handle glued to the aged flesh of wood.

The shackles feel heavy on his wrists, tight around the broken skin, attached to the floor by his ankles. He looks at the sharps of Organa’s cheekbones, the edges in the twist of her lips, and feels archaic.

Loose embers crumble from his bloodied jacket beneath her eyes, the lines on her forehead, the lines around her curved eyelashes. There was something almost unnerving about the dimness in her irises, the quiet condescension simmering a deep fury. Something so familiar which leaves scratches on his sternum and cracks his ribs.

He meets her eyes, but he does not say a word. They are both Generals. He is chained by the wrists in hostile territory and there is blood crusted under his fingernails and filtered on his tongue, but they stand on the same levelled plane. She knows he is as dangerous as she is, that her son’s skull could have caved beneath the press of his fingers at any time. He is at no disadvantage here.

But there is an impatience to her, something which burns the metal between them in his favour. It thaws the bones beneath her skin, sings hushed lullabies to the poorly controlled beat of her heart.

“Well?” Her voice is an imitation of someone in control. He almost smiles.

“Well.”

He almost admires how the twitch her left eyebrow is her only tell.

She licks her lips, as if sitting in his presence has left a bitter taste on her tongue. “Why did you do it?”

For a fleeting second, Hux want to feel his shoulders shrug against torn fabric, wants to purse his lips and narrow his eyes. He wants to be petulant, to emulate annoyance, to ask _do what_? As if he doesn’t know.

But they hold the same status, and there is some begrudging piece buried deep in his mind which shows him Organa’s arms imprisoning Ren.

“It seemed the most viable course of action.”

She almost scoffs, but remembers herself. Hux doesn’t budge against the wall she pushes against him.

“You may have executed a commander of the First Order, aided a traitor in escaping, and by association aided the Resistance.”

Organa’s voice rings in his ears with such certainty a laugh bubbles at the base of his throat. He tastes the sourness at the top of his mouth and swallows it back down.

Hux leans in, and catches the hardening press of her fingers together. Her fingernails leave prints on tender skin.

The table is cold against his elbows, ruffling the fabric of his clothes. The shuffle is almost imperceptible but he knows she catches all of it.

“Like I said,” it rolls smoothly, “it was the most beneficial course of action.”

She tilts her head, and for a fleeting moment he sees the shadow of darker hair, broader shoulders, paler skin.

“Help me understand.”

He hides his surprise at the sincerity in her voice, coaxed gently into practiced words. Hux ignores the nerves cooling to ice in his temples, denies his desire to shift beneath her familiar stare. Her pupils are diluted to a degree, the whites of her eyes shining like moons in the dark of the room. There will be no more pretence.

“The First Order was designed to eliminate disorder from this universe,” his own voice is controlled, tongue rolling through words he has spoken to an audience much greater yet with less significance. “I built it up from the ashes of the Empire,” it is not vanity, not bitterness, “to promote progress, to create civilisation through the rule of law. We were to annihilate the anarchy caused by the _Rebellion,_ ” he spits the name like it burns, and Organa says nothing, “crumble the Republic and maintain _peace._ ”

She does not say anything. She stares, and there’s a pinch to her lips where there wasn’t before, as if the idea of a peaceful and progressive civilisation undeterred by anarchy was so revolting to her.

There’s another tilt, and Hux almost feels himself moving. “You wished to achieve peace through _murder_? Through the slaughter of _innocents_?” Accusation. Hux feels his lips turn upwards in a smile with no grace.

“We limited the distribution of power to _stop wars_ , to prevent _genocide_.” It’s still there, his imitation of a smile, “No one is innocent, General. This universe is not divided into _good_ and _Sith_. You are not the _light_ and we are not darkness.” She looks as if there is much to argue, as if she does not see the truth, “tell me, how many Stormtroopers were slaughtered in the last Resistance raid?”

“That’s different-”

He does not let her finish. He will make her _understand._

“Is it? Do you know there are not clones?” The lines on her forehead tell him she does. He finally shifts, closer. “It was a program I devised.” He says it almost proudly, but he is no fool. “The First Order removes them from their homes amidst their existence, and we program them, teach them our ways from these… tender ages, when their minds are not yet poisoned by your false promises and fake regards. When they are _malleable_.”

“They are not tools! You manipulate them.” Finally. “They were _children._ ”

He leans back completely. Compassion will always be a weakness.

The other General breaths out, through her lips, her nose, as if she wants nothing better than to order his execution. “What is your point?”

His smile grows, twists, darkens. “Don’t you see, _General_?” It’s mocking, as he meant it. “These _children_. These thoughts, initially, they were not their _own._ Manipulated, as you say. Are they not innocent too?”

There’s a pause, and Hux knows to let it fester. “FN-2187 is guilty of slaughtering innocents,” he does not know if FN-2187 had ever killed a man but she does not either, “should he not be executed too? As you intend on executing all the other Stormtroopers?”

“That’s different.” It’s too softly spoken and she knows it too.

“No one is innocent, General.” He shakes his head, lips the dryness from his lips. “Kylo Ren understands this. _That’s_ why I did it.”

“His name is _Ben_.” It’s fiery, furious, bursts through with a shine in her eyes and a chipped soul entrenched in denial. Hux almost chokes on the sheer hypocrisy. The Resistance indeed. “He saved Han. He betrayed your _precious_ order.”

“How do you know?” He presses, continues before Organa replies, “What would killing one man have gained him? He had the opportunity to infiltrate the Falcon and dissect the Resistance from within.”

Her cheeks are pinched with red, her teeth bared to rip the skin of his neck. “He _didn’t._ ”

“ _How do you know_?”

A silence passes between them, slow and languid, crawling on its palms and knees with its last fleeting breath.

“ _Kylo_ knows the truth.” Hux nods his head, slowly, and these aren’t words he has ever said before, words he would never have thought to say. “The First Order was compromised.” It stabs at the flesh of his abdomen and his muscles clench, “Starkiller base is destroyed. We will start anew.”

It’s almost biblical, how the words escape him. How he hears them but does not feel his lips move.

“I will build a new order, and Kylo Ren will be at my side.”

He is only left with the slam of a door.

Hux breathes.

*

Leia’s head spins, thoughts a broken mirror with shards that slice her fingers when she touches them. Reflective, open. Unnerving.

Dizziness is a tide awash within her, pores clogged with a heat that burns her from within, a flame alit with the madness of a lonely man and embers merely his vicious and manipulative notions.

She does not think about the rugged sincerity in Hux’s words, the conviction laced like arsenic in his voice. Her hands had itched to throttle him, to coil rope around the pale flesh of his neck, watch it give in and burn with his last breaths leaving through the smoke.

_Mad._

She tries to hide his words beneath the rubble, dissect each word to find no logic beneath them.

It’s only when she regains herself, pulls together the rampant fear and growing anxiety bubbling behind her eyelids. It’s only then does she hear the loud footsteps, breaking through the frigid air like a waterfall in the desert.

The voice takes longer.

“ _General_ , he’s awake, your son is awake _._ ”

Her hair blinds her, and her hands rub the silver from her eyes.

“ _Kylo Ren is awake_.”

So Leia runs from one monster, and hopes she does not run towards another.   


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At this point, I'm going to stop apologising for the pacing of the story, since that will get old quite quickly.


End file.
